the policy to oppose the Mahomedan everywhere in the land, whether Moghul, Persian, or Afghan—the policy of a struggle for life; but the sardars, long accustomed to independent action, ill-brooked the change to Ranjit Singh's policy of a struggle for one-man power, and often in durbar an old chief would address him as "brother" and speak out his mind regarding the new order of Khalsa affairs. The Sikhs soon found in their Maharaja a master who could unite them, and under whom they grew into a coherent nation stretching from the Sutlej to the Khaibar, from Multan to Kashmir. Not till he had proved his superiority over the numerous chieftains, who with their feudal followers formed the force of the Khalsa, did the Sikhs rise to that political and military prominence in which we found them in 1838, when the tripartite alliance was made, which led to the first Afghan war, for the restoration of the Durrani kingdom of Kabul in the person of Shah Suja, who, with his brother
